Choice Changes Course of History

Once taken, choice acquires a momentum of its own. It is choice that changes the course of history, not necessarily the men who make them.

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Ravi Shankar

October 23, 2010

ISSUE DATE: November 1, 2010

UPDATED: November 25, 2010 11:03 IST

There is no one more dangerous on earth than a neo-convert. Woe betide the hapless guest at a cocktail party who reaches for a shami kebab in the presence of one who has suddenly turned a conscientious vegetarian after enjoying the delights of mutton biryani and korma. The anti-tobacco zealot who has kicked a two-pack-a-day habit curses second-hand smoke and expels earlier companions-in-brume into the inhospitable outdoors.

Omar

This works in politics as well. Look at young Omar Abdullah. Along with the gorgeous golf course his father Farooq built in Srinagar, the son inherited a Kashmir troubled by the memories of a BJP-led blockade which prompted 2,50,000 Kashmiris to try cross the LoC into Pakistan. Omar's essential instincts are that of a democrat, but of a drawing room democrat. As his hair increasingly begins to grey, the comparison with Obama becomes obvious. "The trajectories are the same," he confessed to me, sitting in his garden, riotous with the flowers of autumn in Srinagar. "Obama raised expectations to unmanageable levels. I inherited them. This bubble had to burst." When it did, with rubber bullets and stones, Omar was forced to leave the polite discourse of the salon and adopt the violent vernacular of the Valley's streets. "Jammu and Kashmir hasn't merged with India, but only acceded to it", is the new position he has taken, questioning the fact that Kashmir is an integral part of India. Whether he means it or not, Omar's slide towards expedient extremism has begun.

Once taken, choice acquires a momentum of its own. It is choice that changes the course of history, not necessarily the men who make them.

History is full of failed liberals. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, his daughter Benazir, Che Guevera et al. Bhutto, like Jinnah, loved his Scotch. He loved to have a turn at the roulette wheel and approved the constructions of casinos in his country. But to appease Islamic extremists in Pakistan, he banned alcohol and gambling. His equally cosmopolitan daughter, who played Indira to Bhutto's Nehru in Simla in 1972, admitted to shepherding Pakistan's nuclear relationship with North Korea while turning a blind eye to terrorist training camps-only to become a victim of the same terror which she had helped foster.

Che Guevara

Decades before the Bhuttos, the young Che Guevara, moved by poverty, hunger and disease he witnessed along his motorcycle tour of Latin America, joined Fidel Castro to depose Cuba's dictator Batista. After Cuba turned Communist, Guevara, revered by millions worldwide (with the T-shirts to prove it), turned out to be one of Cuba's most ruthless psychopaths, ordering death squads to execute anyone he suspected of being anti-revolution and murdering many civilians himself. In his memoirs, Guevara writes about navigating a swamp while Batista's planes strafed his group of rebels. A trained doctor, he had to abandon his boat. "I had to choose between taking my medical kit or my gun because both would've been too heavy to carry," he writes. "And I chose the gun." Once taken, choice acquires a momentum of its own. It is choice that changes the course of history, not necessarily the men who make them.

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